Free Republic

More whistleblowers will emerge shortly in the escalating Benghazi scandal, according to two former U.S. diplomats who spoke with PJ Media Monday afternoon. These whistleblowers, colleagues of the former diplomats, are currently securing legal counsel because they work in areas not fully protected by the Whistleblower law. According to the diplomats, what these whistleblowers will say will be at least as explosive as what we have already learned about the scandal, including details about what really transpired in Benghazi that are potentially devastating to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. snip... Stevens’ mission in Benghazi, they will say, was to...

During the summer of 2010, the dozen or so accountants and tax agents of Group 7822 of the Internal Revenue Service office in Cincinnati got a directive from their manager. A growing number of organizations identifying themselves as part of the Tea Party had begun applying for tax exemptions, the manager said, advising the workers to be on the lookout for them and other groups planning to get involved in elections. “I don’t believe there’s any such thing as rogue agents,” said Bonnie Esrig, a former senior manager in the I.R.S. office in Cincinnati. The specialists, hunched over laptops on...

Nathaniel Philbrick's new book gets at the on-the-ground reality of the American Revolution, which the author writes began as 'a profoundly conservative movement.' John Trumbull's "Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill." (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / Viking / May 12, 2013) It turns out the modern incarnation of the tea party may have more in common with the original Boston hell-raisers than people think. Americans have long romanticized the events leading to the Battle of Bunker Hill and the start of the American Revolution, most without really understanding what happened or what was at stake....

After I (Pharmboy) returned from King's Mountain (the wife and I stopped by there on the way back from attending my son's graduation from US Army Ranger School at Ft Benning), Bert told me that he and his wife would be following the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail (OVNHT) from Eastern TN to King's Mountain, SC. I told Bert that I would love to see his account of the trip, and that I would also like to post it to FR: well, he did a terrific job on his blog, here are some excerpts. Go to the blog for more!...

SAVANNAH, Ga. May 5, 2013 (AP) Less than two months after British forces captured Savannah in December 1778, patriot militiamen scored a rare Revolutionary War victory in Georgia after a short but violent gunbattle forced British loyalists to abandon a small fort built on a frontiersman's cattle farm. More than 234 years later, archaeologists say they've pinpointed the location of Carr's Fort in northeastern Georgia after a search with metal detectors covering more than 4 square miles turned up musket balls and rifle parts as well as horse shoes and old frying pans. The February 1779 shootout at Carr's Fort...

Aaron “Tango” Tang Cops are seeking these two men (above) who were spotted near the site of the Boston blasts. Investigators probing the deadly Boston Marathon bombings are circulating photos of two men spotted chatting near the packed finish line, The Post has learned. In the photos being distributed by law-enforcement officials among themselves, one of the men is carrying a blue duffel bag. The other is wearing a black backpack in the first photo, taken at 10:53 a.m., but it is not visible in the second, taken at 12:30 p.m. “The attached photos are being circulated in an...

Associated Press/Mark Scolforo - In this photo made on Tuesday, March 26, 2013, Carol Tanzola, president of Friends of Camp Security, points out the property on a 47-acre parcel, located about four miles east of York, Pa. It includes the spot where a 1979 archaeological study found numerous artifacts that confirmed local lore that the area had once served as Camp Security, a prison for the English, Scottish and Canadian soldiers who were captured after defeats in the battles of Saratoga and Yorktown. (AP Photo/Mark Scolforo) (AP) — The mud of a south-central Pennsylvania cornfield may soon produce answers about...

The discovery of the structure of DNA and the subsequent developments in genetics and genomics have had a great impact on all of the biological sciences, including human evolution. Our ideas about human evolution 60 years ago came primarily from the fossil and archaeological records. These fields revealed that the last two million years were a dynamic period of our evolutionary history. The human lineage two million years ago was a population with ape-sized brains limited to sub-Saharan Africa. The human lineage expanded into Eurasia around 1.85 million years ago, and our brain size increased throughout the Pleistocene. Anatomically modern...

War veterans in New Rochelle are protesting the city's order for the so-called Gadsden flag to be taken down from its post outside the armory. Jonathan Vigliotti reports War veterans in New Rochelle are protesting the city's order for the so-called Gadsden flag to be taken down from its post outside the armory. A symbol of pride for the veterans, the flag features a rattlesnake and the words, "Don't tread on me." "That flag is the first flag of the Continetal Navy," said Peter Parente, president of the United Veterans Memorial. He helped hoist the flag up on March...

Revolutionary War history Last Ohio surviving soldier buried in Noble Co. HIRAMSBURG-Nestled off the beaten path in Noble County in a small family cemetery are two headstones marking the final resting place of Private John Gray, the last surviving Revolutionary War soldier in Ohio, and the second to last in the nation. Though Gray fought in many battles during the war, he otherwise did little that would have gained him renown. He was born the oldest of eight into a poor laboring family near Mount Vernon, Va., and worked most of his life as a laborer. He was not a...

<p>Put down your pitchforks. The wealthiest 10% pay a big majority of federal income taxes. Pick up your pitchforks. The story is more complicated than that.</p> <p>Many people think that the rich are able to weasel their way out of taxes, but they actually pay an overwhelming majority of the taxes in the United States. What's more, their share of the tax burden is increasing.</p>

The study found that a higher number of firearm laws in a state is associated with a lower rate of firearm fatalities in the state, overall and for suicides and homicides individually. However the study could not determine cause-and-effect relationships because of limitations inherent in the study design. States with more intensive regulation of gun ownership, sales, and storage tended to have lower rates of gun-related fatalities, researchers said. With state-level gun laws from 2007 to 2010 rated on a "legislative strength" scale, states in the top quartile had gun-related fatality rates more than 40% lower than states in the...

Gaining a deep insight into human evolution, researchers have identified a mutation in a critical human gene as the source of several distinctive traits that make East Asians different from other races. Researchers have identified a mutation in a gene that confers several distinct traits to East Asians, including thicker hair. The traits — thicker hair shafts, more sweat glands, characteristically identified teeth and smaller breasts — are the result of a gene mutation that occurred about 35,000 years ago, the researchers have concluded. snip The first of those sites to be studied contains the gene known as EDAR. Africans...

I do not get this from her blog, but as a tweet of hers when it was re-tweeted by someone I follow. I never heard of her before today, but thought the term "Assault Media" deserved widespread notice around there here parts.From now on, that's how I will refer to them. I don't even know if she came up with the term.

The last Neanderthals had passed by southern Iberia quite earlier than previously thought. Neanderthals may have died out earlier than before thought, researchers say. These findings hint that Neanderthals did not coexist with modern humans as long as previously suggested, investigators added.Modern humans once shared the planet with now-departed human lineages, including the Neanderthals, our closest known extinct relatives. However, there has been heated debate over just how much time and interaction, or interbreeding, Neanderthals had with modern humans. To help solve the mystery, an international team of researchers investigated 215 bones previously excavated from 11 sites in southern Iberia,...

The Historic Arkansas Museum will have two of George Washington's Bibles on display beginning Feb. 8. According to the museum's website, the Bible from the first president's inauguration will be on display for only two days, Feb. 8 from 5:00-8:00 p.m. and Saturday, Feb. 9 from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. The George Washington Family Bible will also be exhibited, but will be on display for a longer period of time.

Army transitioning to Israeli-made assault rifle for all units, according to report An IDF infantry soldier armed with an Israeli-made Tavor rifle takes part in an urban warfare drill. (photo credit: Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90) The IDF is phasing out its American-made M-16 assault rifles and replacing them with its Israeli-made Tavor assault rifles, according to a report on Maariv’s website NRG. The Tavor — featuring a very different design than the M-16, developed for the IDF’s needs by Israel Military Industries during the 1990s — was introduced into service with regular infantry troops in the early 2000s, and slowly integrated to...

Todd Andrlik became a newspaper collector by chance. It happened at a bookstore in Galena, Ill., where he came across a copy of an old newspaper declaring President Abraham Lincoln dead. “I was reading the first draft of history about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the reward for the capture of his conspirators,” Andrlik said. “It triggered in me this intense passion and enthusiasm in history that I previously hadn’t had.” From there, Andrlik said he went around the country searching for old newspapers and found many from 18th-century colonial America. These newspapers inspired Andrlik, a marketing-media professional by...

One of the few accomplishments of a “do nothing” Congress may be to help a Connecticut man who for decades has tried to win recognition of the Revolutionary War’s black soldiers. The Senate approved a bill this week that would authorize $631 billion in Pentagon spending for a vast array of purposes — and it would approve the transfer of federal land in the heart of Washington D.C. toa group that wants to build a new memorial to black Revolutionary War soldiers and sailors. The memorial amendment was sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. “This would...

NBC is developing a drama series about George Washington, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “Washington: A Life.” In that book, author Ron Chernow wrote that the country’s first president “ranks as the most famously elusive figure in American history, a remote, enigmatic personage more revered than truly loved.”... The network has ordered a script from David Seidler... “There’s George Washington the national icon, starting from the dollar bill with his supposed mouthful of wooden teeth, and then there’s the George Washington who had an adulterous affair with his best friend’s wife. The George Washington obsessed with social status, finely...

"Mommy, what's that???" For anyone reading this, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that Dutch food has yet to sweep the globe. Although pockets of the Dutch can be found scattering the world, delectable Dutch cuisine never seemed to have caught on. “Fancy I pick up some Dutch food on the way home from work?” or “Wow, you have got to try this new Dutch restaurant in SoHo!” are phrases you will never hear uttered. Isn’t it odd that a nation of traveling, colonizing, patriotic, emigrating folk never managed to sow their own culinary seeds? C’mon, who are we...

I have had these friends for years...they are retired state workers, currently employed teachers, and people who work for universities. I enjoy their company (so long as we stay away from politics) and do stuff together. BUT...they really piss me off...why? Because they chose their job pathway to security and very circumscribed work hours. No overtime. No weekends. Yet...YET...they constantly bitch about people with wealth who have worked for it. Took a chance, and achieve success.

Staff photo by TIN NGUYEN St. Ignatius Catholic Church at Chapel Point, built 1789, sits on top a hill overlooking the bank of the Port Tobacco River, where the place of worship of the original St. Ignatius Parish, founded in 1641, was located. Catholics arrived in Maryland in greater numbers on the promise of religious freedom in the new American colony from the restriction of the Anglican Church. Southern Maryland has several churches that are rich in history and continue to serve. Some of the oldest churches, many of which are Episcopal and Roman Catholic congregations, have stories of Jesuit...

Over 150 people gathered Sunday at Trinity Church in Manhattan to honor Gen. Horatio Gates. Mention “the Victor at Saratoga” and people may think that you are talking about a horse. Yet that so-called victor, Gen. Horatio Gates, the commander of the American forces at the Battle of Saratoga, played a crucial role in the triumph there over the British forces of Gen. John Burgoyne in October 1777. Though other figures of the War of Independence are still widely revered and studied, Gates faded from the national memory. He died in New York in 1806 and was buried at Trinity...

It looks like the Barclays Center thinks Jay-Z fans are more likely to cause 99 problems than the upper-crust Barbra Streisand set. The arena forced the crowd at the rapper’s recent concert series to herd through its new airport-style metal detectors — while fans of the legendary diva were spared the same indignity at her show on Thursday. The security-policy switcheroo was blasted yesterday as a “double standard” that seemed racially inflammatory considering the audiences for each... Another tweeter quipped that for the Streisand fans, Barclays security should have employed “a brisket-sniffing dog!” Not only did the arena treat Jay-Z...

Native American Indians from western United States found to have genetic mutation typical of Ashkenazi Jews; connection may date back to time of Christopher Columbus A population of Native American Indians from the US state of Colorado has been found to have a genetic mutation typical of Ashkenazi Jews. The finding suggests the presence of common roots that date back to the days of Christopher Columbus. According to RT news, the so-called “Ashkenazi mutation” is a deleterious modification in BRCA1 gene which increases risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. Researchers from the Sheba (Tel Hashomer) Medical Center in Israel...

I have always enjoyed hearing those funny and clever expressions handed down from grandmas and grandpas in the heartland. I grew up in the east, but went to school in the mid-west, and some of the guys I went to school with had some great ones. I would love to hear some of yours.I will start with a few that I heard years ago, and ask you folks to add your own favorites that you heard from friends and family.My dad (NYC): "Busier than a one-armed paper hanger."From a buddy from Indiana:"Well, he stands out like two turds in a...

HOUSTON – (Sept. 18, 2012) – Contrary to the prevailing theories that music and language are cognitively separate or that music is a byproduct of language, theorists at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) advocate that music underlies the ability to acquire language. “Spoken language is a special type of music,” said Anthony Brandt, co-author of a theory paper published online this month in the journal Frontiers in Cognitive Auditory Neuroscience. “Language is typically viewed as fundamental to human intelligence, and music is often treated as being dependent on or derived from...

<p>Chipper Jones said he was asked the other day how he would feel about himself if he were a Mets fan. “I would respect the body of work,” Jones said, “but I would hate his guts.”</p> <p>Chipper Jones received a brief standing ovation at the start of his farewell visit to Queens.</p>

The road from Reading to Easton, now Route 222, was called King's Highway in 1776. It was a critical artery for the movement of troops and supplies during the American Revolution. Indeed, there's strong evidence that Gen. George Washington himself traversed the road on his way to upstate New York in 1782, stopping off in the Moravian town of Bethlehem. Revolution, however, was not on the minds of most colonists when the Reading-to-Easton road was proposed by Conrad Weiser, William Parsons and other leaders in 1753; Indians were. There had been massacres of settlers pushing north from Philadelphia to settle...

A-list movie cars come in three categories: First are the glamorous cars like James Bond’s silver 1964 Aston Martin DB5; next are over-the-top custom creations like the Batmobile; and finally, the decidedly unglamorous cars that nevertheless grabbed a ton of screen time in their respective films. Think the Bluesmobile in “The Blues Brothers” or the Wagon Queen Family Truckster in “National Lampoon’s Vacation.” These aren’t those cars. No, they’re the B-listers, cars that had brief but highly memorable bit parts in films that we all love. See how many you can remember: 1960 Buick Le Sabre (“Fast Times at Ridgemont...

Indo-European tongues traced back more than 8,000 years to present-day Turkey ANCIENT SPREADThe map shows the timing and geographic expansion of Indo-European languages proposed in a new statistical analysis. The red area in what’s now Turkey is a possible birthplace of the Indo-European language family more than 8,000 years ago.Remco Bouckaert et al. Indo-European languages range throughout Europe and South Asia and even into Iran, yet the roots of this widespread family of tongues have long been controversial. A new study adds support to the proposal that the language family expanded out of Anatolia — what’s now Turkey — between...

Scientists are beginning to analyze the DNA differences between modern humans and our extinct archaic relatives, the Denisovans. (National Human Genome Research Institute) Genome of ancient Denisovans may help clarify human evolution Scientists recently reported they had pieced together a high-quality sequence of an archaic human relative, the Denisovans. Among other things, the researchers took a close look at the ways in which we differ from these people, who were named after the place where their traces were discovered: Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia....snip It's "fascinating" to see the DNA changes that spread to most or all...

Instructions for Steak like a Restaurant 1. o 1 Prepare the steak by rubbing both sides with oil, Kosher salt and pepper. Kosher salt is a large flake salt that can be found next to the table salt. o 2 Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F. Cooking steak without overcooking it is all about hitting it with a lot of heat very quickly. o 3 Place the cast iron frying pan onto the stove top on high heat. This will preheat the pan. From now on that you only touch the cast iron frying pan with the pot holder,...

CONFIDENT Bob Furman suspects that up to 256 Revolutionary soldiers lie under this lot in Gowanus.Dave Sanders for The New York Times NOTHING is visible at the intersection of Third Avenue and Eighth Street in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn to indicate that anything extraordinary is there. The artisanal-pie place on one corner and the auto body shops across the way suggest it is merely another spot in the city where grit is giving way to gentrification. But if a small group of history enthusiasts are right, this particular corner of Kings County is hallowed ground. HEROIC Kim Maier,...

Recent research strikes a blow to the theory that humans and Neanderthals interbred. THE GIST Studies over the last two years suggest that Neanderthals vanished more than 30,000 years ago. This would mean that early humans and Neanderthals could not have interbred. enlarge Over the last two years, several studies have suggested that Homo sapiens got it on with Neanderthals, an hominid who lived in parts of Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East for up to 300,000 years but vanished more than 30,000 years ago. The evidence for this comes from fossil DNA, which shows that on average Eurasians...

ORISKANY—Nearly 200 people gathered Monday to remember the 235th anniversary of one of the bloodiest battles during the Revolutionary War at The Battle of Oriskany. It was a commemorative ceremony held by members of the Oneida Nation and representatives from the National Parks Service at Fort Stanwix. During the ceremony flags were lowered to half-staff, wreaths were placed at the monument, and men wore military costumes while firing off muskets. “There were hundreds of people who lost their lives here in this battle and it’s really important to remember those people who gave their lives for our freedom today,” said...

Ask Ron Devlin: Country they fought against became home Reading Eagle: Tim Leedy The state historical marker for Hessian Camp on Mineral Spring Road. Dorothy Johnston, who grew up near Hessian Camp in Reading, wondered what happened to the German mercenaries imprisoned in Reading during the Revolutionary War. First, some background. Faced with open revolt in its American Colonies, Britain arranged with the Prince of Hesse-Cassel, the Duke of Brunswick and other German nobles to send troops to the Colonies. By some estimates, 30,000 German mercenaries, including those called Hessians, were sent to help the British squelch the rebellion. After...

The Princeton Battlefield Society has filed an appeal of the Princeton Regional Planning Board’s decision to allow the Institute for Advanced Study to build faculty housing on a part of the battlefield known as Maxwell’s Field on Friday, and is also seeking funds to support the society’s fight. According to the society, the proposed development area of the battlefield is believed to be the site of a winning counterattack lead by George Washington during the Battle of Princeton. The appeal includes 12 counts that challenge the Planning Board’s decision. ”The Planning Board failed numerous times to properly support its decision...

A ship’s bell from a wreck found off St. Augustine has yielded another clue to the possible identify of the ship that may date from the American Revolution. The clue: a button found in the concretion still attached to the bronze bell that was discovered in 2010 by archaeologists with the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program. “It’s in rough shape,” Sam Turner, director of archaeology at the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum, said of the button. Even so, the top part of a crown can be seen on the button and similar crowns are found on Royal Provincial buttons plus the...

It's believed to be the oldest building in Ohio, and possibly the Midwest. But the mystery remains: who built it and why? COSHOCTON, Ohio -- It's believed to be the oldest building in Ohio, and possibly the Midwest – built nearly a century before the American Revolution. But the mystery remains: who built the Old Stone Fort and why? On an ordinary plot of farm land on County Road 254 in eastern Coshocton County sits what is arguably one of the most important buildings in Ohio history. It is believed that the Old Stone Fort was built sometime around...

Contrary to legend, it wasn't the federal government, and the Internet had nothing to do with maintaining communications during a war. A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: "The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet." It's an urban legend that the government launched the Internet. The myth is that the Pentagon...

A coat of a certain color could be costly for wild boars, according to research published in the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology. The research, led by Ismael Galván of Spain's Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, found that boars with more reddish hair tend to have higher levels of oxidative stress—damage that occurs as toxins from cell respiration build up. The reason for this, the researchers suggest, is that the process of producing reddish pigment eats up a valuable antioxidant that would otherwise be fighting the free radicals that lead to oxidative stress. Most of the pigment in animal skin...

His annotated Constitution was worth $9.8 million at auction — but was priceless to a nation When George Washington’s personal, annotated copy of the Constitution sold last week for $9.8 million at auction in New York, it didn’t just set a record. It allowed us to see, for the first time, how cautiously our first president assumed the office, his eyes not toward history but the future. “This shows that he let the presidency define him, rather than for him to define the presidency,” says Edward Lengel, military historian and author of two books on Washington. “He was a man...

The passion of American ministers for political freedom in 1776 reflected their belief in religious toleration.On Sunday morning, Jan. 21, 1776, at a church in Woodstock, Va., Rev. Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg brought his sermon to a dramatic and unexpected crescendo. His text was taken from the book of Ecclesiastes. "The Bible tells us 'there is a time for all things,' and there is a time to preach and a time to pray," said Muhlenberg. "But the time for me to preach has passed away; and there is a time to fight, and that time has now come." Stepping down from...

The pocket-sized ivory sundial likely belonged to one of the early English gentlemen colonists. It was discovered while archaeologists were carefully digging fill soil above a cellar dated to the early James Fort period (1607-1610) at Jamestown, Virginia, the site of North America's first successful English colony. The artifact was the lower leaf of an ivory pocket sundial known in the 17th century as a diptych dial. It clearly bore the name of its maker, Hans Miller, who was a 17th century craftsman known to have made sundials in Nuremberg, Germany. Like many objects found at the Jamestown excavations, it...

Please click here and watch this short, amazing commercial.I saw it tonight while watching Spike TV and could hardly believe my eyes and ears: a national corporation (and direct seller to the public) shows NO FEAR in support of the Second Amendment.Three huzzahs! to Denny's for the guts not to care if they lose gun-grabber's business.

All I can say is thank God for cable, so we can watch some great college baseball. Right now it's vs. The good folk of Omaha have once again adopted the underdog, the SUNY Stony Brook (Long Island, NY) Seawolves.Both UCLA and Stony Brook had 7 taken in the draft this year.

George Washington is justifiably called the "Father of America" for his military and civilian leadership during the American Revolution and his two terms as America's first president, however, in the new book, George Washington’s Military Genius, General David Palmer persuasively argues that Washington's strategic military talent was key to his success. Gen. Palmer, who is a former superintendent of West Point, attempts to bust the myths surrounding Washington’s American Revolutionary War experience and to put the accomplishments on the battlefield in perspective. Some historians view Washington as an incompetent bungler who merely got lucky in a few engagements with the...

Land awarded to a Polish freedom fighter more than 200 years ago by a grateful United States has been turned into a park bearing the name of the man who spent his life championing liberty and equality in America and Poland. The 36-acre Thaddeus Kosciuszko Park in Dublin, which opened this month, was part of a grant of 500 acres awarded by Congress for Kosciuszko’s contributions as a military engineer and Continental Army colonel during the Revolutionary War. Alex Storozynski, president and executive director of the Kosciuszko Foundation based in New York, said Kosciuszko was ahead of his time in...